SEO is a very time intensive process that ensures your website is “optimized” in a way that clearly communicates to Google the purpose and meaning of your website content.

The Purpose of SEO

The goal of applying proper SEO techniques to your website is:

To improve your website rankings (generally speaking)

To improve your website ranking with Google, specifically for the products and services that your business provides (being more specific)

It will behoove you to “be more specific” when discussing SEO issues with your Internet Marketing (or website design) service provider.

Example:

If you are a coffee shop in Santa Barbara, California, you want your website to rank well for the keywords “santa barbara coffee shop“, or “coffee shops in santa barbara ca“. Please note that you want to rank well when someone is searching for your product or service in your city AND they don’t know that your business exists.

Technobabble phrases like “SEO Ready” and “SEO Friendly” do NOT mean a website has been optimized for the search engines.

All it means is that the website (or website theme), due to the software used to build and maintain it, might be a bit easier to optimize IF you choose to take the necessary steps and IF you know how to do it properly.

I have even seen “SEO Optimized” misused in the same context. All of these phrases are terribly misleading to unknowing consumers.

What You Should Know About SEO

A website is either “Optimized” for the search engines, or it isn’t.

SEO techniques have either been properly applied to your website, or they haven’t.

It is NOT an automated process. It is a hands-on, multi-step process that takes time and diligence:

Keywords must be continually tested and tweaked with your website for best results

SEO is a never-ending process

A properly optimized website influences its design and setup in several ways, including:

Page content

Layout and design of your web pages

Page names

Page headers

Title Tags

URL structure

Meta descriptions (snippets)

ALT tags

Anchor text

And much more

And this doesn’t even touch the “offsite” SEO tasks needed to successfully promote your business website.

A trained eye can very quickly and easily determine if SEO best practices have been implemented on a website. There are even several free online services that will “examine” your website and pinpoint the areas where it is SEO deficient.

Yet Another SEO Definition

I have racked my brain trying to come up with a pithy phrase that best describes a website properly optimized for search engines:

SEO Certified (too legalistic, and certified by whom?)

SEO Complete (too vague)

SEO Compliant (more technobabble!)

SEO Perfected (not sure this is possible 🙂 )

Okay, I give up!

SEO, when used as an adjective, can be very misleading.

It is important to remember that SEO is an acronym that describes a process. This process must be applied to each website with its specific requirements in mind.

Instead of a misleading catch-phrase, I offer the following bulleted definition:

SEO is a process by which a website is formatted so that it effectively communicates to search engines its meaning and purpose

The ultimate goal of SEO is to improve a website’s ranking on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page)

A high ranking is of value ONLY if it is in response to keyword searches that reflect products, services, or messages that are specific to your business